Below is our weekly chart of significant rest-of-season playing time changes for hitters, led by a lot of shuffling of the Rockies’ outfield playing time due to injury:

If you want to get a hit, trying to square up the ball is a great place to start. But not all squared up hits are created equal. Squaring up your grounders and line drives will likely help your batting average, but won’t do much in the home run department. Squaring up your flyballs, especially at the ideal launch angle, should help get the ball out of the yard.

If you look at the surface level Savant lollipops, you will see a “Squared-Up%” metric, which is represented on FanGraphs by “SqUpCon%”. This describes a batted ball event where at least 80% of the possible exit velocity on a pitch was obtained, given the swing and pitch characteristics, which typically means a ball that was hit on the sweet spot of the bat, according to Statcast.

As explored by Fangraphs’ Davy Andrews, even before we look at the launch angle of a squared up ball, we should acknowledge that not all of these swings result in a ball that’s hit even remotely hard, because a ridiculously slow swing that hits the ball on the barrel can still technically be squared up by the Statcast definition. But for the most part, hitters are swinging relatively hard. And we have ways to see just how fast they swing and how often they unleash their fast swings now, thanks again to Statcast. 

With all of this in mind, check out the Fangraphs Squared-Up Explorer. This tool helps you see how often a hitter is squaring up the ball at different launch angles, highlighting the ideal launch angle for home runs and visualizing a given hitter’s profile compared to league average. 

Using this tool, you can compare a given hitter’s profile against other hitters and during different periods of time. You can compare Gunnar Henderson’s hot start in 2024 to his 2025 and to his start to this season, as I did last week. 

Today, I’ll run through a few examples that demonstrate the possible ways to use the Squared-Up Explorer and try to show you that you can and should use this tool yourself as a starting point for analyzing hitters, whether it be struggling bats you may want to cut or hot streak hitters you’re looking for an excuse to believe in. For the hitters I look into, I’ll provide some recommendations, but really want to invite you to use this exceptionally user-friendly tool yourself. 

Let’s start with a particularly frustrating hitter, Fernando Tatis Jr. 

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Every single year, there are hitters that seemingly come out of nowhere to post fantasy seasons worthy of shallow mixed league starting rosters. Whether it’s driven by more playing time than expected or a surprise skills surge, these are the types of players that win leagues. The challenge is determining which hitters are for real and will continue delivering positive value the rest of the season, and which are merely on hot streaks that will end soon, at which point they’ll be dropped in the majority of leagues. Let’s discuss 10 such names.

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Neville E. Guard-Imagn Images

American League

Angels

• Oswald Peraza’s (.775 OPS) playing time dried up with just two starts in the last five games. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we looked at five of the top rookie hitters to examine their major league path, performance, skills, and how to value them moving forward. There have been many rookie hitters who have been providing value in redraft, keeper, and dynasty leagues of various sizes, so we wanted to cover five more. It’s helpful to digest their prospect grades and reports to see how they align with the underlying metrics. Should we buy, sell, or hold these five rookie hitters? We plan to cover pitchers in a future article if you’re wondering what’s next. 

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Before I get into analyzing what I think may be a relatively broken hitter, I have something to admit. This admission may sound familiar to you. Especially if you are at all impulsive. Or love to trade.

A few weeks back, after trading Corey Seager for Dylan Cease in what felt like an absolute coup, I got a bit ahead of my skis. Without looking at a single Fangraphs or Baseball Savant page, I fired an offer into the ether. I dealt away Michael King, Cade Cavalli, and Bo Bichette for Gunnar Henderson, in what felt like a classic buy low-sell high, where Henderson represented the low and King the high. 

The point of this article is not to discuss King’s less than rosy peripherals. Nor is it to shame me for dealing Bichette before he seemingly started heating up. It is, at least in part, a cautionary tale, though I’d say it’s a hopeful one.

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DeLuca? DeLightful!

On the Agenda: 

1. Closer Chaos
2. Quick Hits
3. Various News and Notes
4. Streaming Pitchers

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I’ve played fantasy baseball for almost 30 years now. The older I get, the more I am comfortable leaning into building fantasy teams around higher-floor players, aka the Steady Eddies. You know who they are: someone consistent, reliable, and dependable. Though it isn’t known where the term originated, most baseball fans remember it as the nickname of the steady Hall of Fame hitter, Eddie Murray. There’s also the Australian comedian Steady Eddy from the 1990’s, though his act was hectic and chaotic, hence the irony of his moniker.

Steady Eddies are hard to find in baseball since no one can maintain consistent, dominant production over a 162-game season. We’re mostly talking about durable players who stay healthy and away from the IL, hitters with above-average plate discipline who don’t fall into prolonged funks, and pitchers who rarely get bombed for five or more earned runs in a start.

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Below are all the significant swings in projected playing time for position players over the last seven days. This week has a prospect-y flair, with A.J. Ewing joining the Mets, Colt Emerson up with the Mariners, and post-prospect Dylan Crews set to rejoin the Nationals.

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Last week, I discussed disappointing unproven hitters that would likely be easier to buy low on, if you so chose, than proven veterans. Today, let’s shift over to guys we’re really talking about when targeting buy low candidate. The caveat here is that most owners will not be willing to sell low, so it’s going to be more difficult to succeed here. Let’s now dive in and decide which names are worth pursuing.

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